Design of high-precision control and remote NDT system for industrial pipeline robots

Abstract

To address the challenges of non-Destructive Testing (NDT) on industrial pipelines operating in high-altitude, high-risk, and non-planar wall environments, this paper presents a high-precision control and remote inspection system for an industrial pipeline NDT robot. The system employs an STM32H743VIT6 as the core controller, integrating MPU9250- based attitude sensing, PID closed-loop control, and ESP32-C3 Internet of Things (IoT) communication technologies to achieve integrated wall adhesion, attitude stabilization, precise motion control, and real-time remote monitoring. By implementing complementary filtering for attitude calculation and positional PID parameter tuning, the proposed system overcomes the common limitations of traditional wall-climbing robots, including attitude drift, low control accuracy, and insufficient operational intelligence. Furthermore, a high-precision phased array ultrasonic flaw detection sensor combined with an FPGA-based signal processing module enables accurate identification of pipeline defects. Experimental results demonstrate that the robot achieves an attitude control error of≤0.05°, a motion speed stabilized within 0.8-1.2cm/s, a pipeline defect detection accuracy of 0.005mm, and an endurance of ≥8 hours. Compared with conventional equipment, the proposed system exhibits superior adaptability to complex industrial pipeline walls, control stability, and inspection efficiency. It effectively replaces manual inspection for high-altitude pipeline flaw detection and provides a reliable technical solution for intelligent operation and maintenance of industrial pipelines.